Dr. Peter Muennig of Columbia University in New York and colleagues calculated the amount of illness due to overweight and obesity in the United States. They found that overweight cost U.S. women 1.8 million years of perfect health, compared with just 270,000 years lost for men. Obesity cost women 3.40 million years of perfect health, compared to 1.94 million years for men.

Most of the years of health that women lost to overweight and obesity were due to poor health-related quality of life and later-life mortality, the researchers note in the September issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

Death rates among overweight and obese women were lower than for men up until age 45; after age 45, women’s mortality was far higher than men’s.